


you were a fortune teller, you read my hand

by gravinnen



Series: can you hear that hopeful heart [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4497666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravinnen/pseuds/gravinnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan looks great in green hoodies and Adam doesn't care at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were a fortune teller, you read my hand

It’s an exceptionally bright but otherwise really quite average Tuesday in July when Adam has an epiphany and somehow, this feels _wrong_.

Blue and Gansey are playing a game of badminton in the parking lot of Monmouth, bickering about whether or not Gansey is really that bad or letting Blue win, about what to get for dinner tonight and who’s paying for it and about whether Yesterday is an average _and_ overplayed song or a great _but_ overplayed song. The sun is beating down on the asphalt and the air smells almost sweet.  
  
Adam had just finished reading up on what he assumes his first Economics test will be about when the game started and so he’d offered to keep score for them - come on, Gansey, get it, get it, oooh, so close - and he’s just trying to stop laughing about Gansey insisting on calling the birdie a shuttlecock when very suddenly, it hits him.

Blue and Gansey banding together like this - the touch of their hands when they high-five, their palms brushing - used to make him feel excluded, less bright, less _there_ than the others. Blue’s lingering gaze and Gansey hastily averting his eyes as her shorts hitch up just a little bit used to make him feel like he could barely breathe. He’d get angry - angry about his accent, the smear of dirt on his arm, the mismatched freckles on his feet forming ugly constellations just underneath his toes - about all the things Gansey would never have to worry about but now, _now_ , he just feels a nice calm nothingness.

He’s on the sideline of this particular badminton game but he’s not _on_ the sideline anymore. Adam supposes he hasn’t been feeling about Blue like he used to feel about her for quite some time already but this moment, the sun shining on his face and feeling completely prepared for a test on a subject he’s yet to take a class on, is the first time he’s really been actively aware of it. He stretches out his legs.

“Twenty-one, yes, Blue wins.” Adam hears himself say as Gansey dives to the right. He rolls her name off his tongue experimentally, checks for butterflies and it’s not as if Adam is suddenly immune for the way Blue’s collarbones jut out just above her shirt but he’s not as intrigued anymore.

Gansey’s staring at his racket with a disappointed expression on his face as if it’s somehow the racket’s fault that he keeps losing instead of his own. Adam can’t really imagine Gansey being that bad at badminton. It has to be an act. He thinks this day is entirely too average to have an epiphany.

Noah appears next to Adam. He flickers. “Epiphanies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.” The sound of _just you wait_ hangs heavy in the air.  
  


***  
  
  
  
The differences are subtle after this epiphany but they’re definitely there. Adam can feel change curling around his bones as his heart grows less heavy. Sometimes when he’s working on the ley line with Blue he thinks about how great it would to be nothing more than friends with her, about what a great friend she is to have, how lucky he is. Sometimes when he’s fixing Gansey’s car and Gansey is looking over his shoulder muttering, ‘ah, you’re supposed to plug that _in_ ’ and ‘I was honestly under the impression that I’d already done that’ he thinks about how kind Gansey often is to him, how kind they are to each other, how they are learning to give each other space to just be.

Sometimes when he’s with Ronan, studying or pretending to study, talking about dreams and dreaming, driving somewhere or nowhere, he thinks about kissing boys.

Adam is not entirely sure when this started happening but he’s fairly confident it was somewhere between the badminton game and the time Ronan rolled over from his stomach to his back and a sliver of skin appeared between his shirt and his jeans that left Adam going red on the back of his neck.

It’s strange because Adam can remember so clearly when Ronan made his skin crawl and all he did was wonder why Gansey liked him so much, why he kept around such a source of wild and destructive energy. He can remember so well being upset, disappointed and angry but it’s as if he’s watching himself feeling those emotions from a distance instead of really, really feeling them. Everything is suddenly very different.

Thinking about Ronan being unnecessarily violent to walls, calling him names, making fun of everything and nothing just doesn’t get to him as much anymore. Even the time Adam had offered to look over an essay for Ronan to try and bond with him only to find that Ronan had ended every single quotes with ‘someone once said this probably, 1967’ doesn’t make his blood boil anymore when the memory of it used to make him want to break something. Ronan’s fuck you attitude is still pretty lame and he’s definitely not a fan of checking barely understandable essays but it’s not enough to render Ronan’s knobbly knees poking out from underneath his tennis shorts completely undesirable.

Adam thinks about hand cream on the seat of his car. He thinks about how he never could call Ronan just a friend - how, to Adam, he was always the worst or the best, a devil or a god in his church. He thinks about finding your dad in a garage with a bashed in skull and a car he’s dreamt up. He thinks about losing your mother and your brother at the same time even though they’re both not dead. He thinks there’s probably a lot that you can get away with after that.  
  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Adam is just sitting at the big desk in Monmouth, tapping his pens and contemplating how his sudden interest in kissing boys isn’t freaking him out and how he’s kind of worried about that when Ronan walks in. He’s wearing dark jeans that look old and a green hoodie that looks new. Adam’s breathing doesn’t get any harder but it doesn’t get any easier either. Ronan scrunches up his nose as a greeting and dumps his bag in a corner.

“That’s a lot of color for a regular weekday.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” Ronan sits down on the desk and puts his feet on the side of Adam’s chair, wiggling his toes underneath Adam’s leg. He’s wearing socks with little ravens on them. “It’s only casual fucking Friday once a week.”  
  
“I thought casual Friday was only once a month.”  
  
“Who fucking cares, Parrish.”  
  
Adam doesn’t miss Ronan self-consciously pushing up the sleeves of his sweater as if he’s suddenly very aware of himself, revealing tiny sun-kissed white hairs on his skinny arms, bone jutting out near his wrist.  
  
“Right.” Adam swallows. “Where’d you get it anyway?”  
  
“Ordered it online.”  
  
For some reason, the image of Ronan hunched over his sleek, silver laptop looking for hoodies the color of forests makes him laugh. Of all the things that come to mind when thinking about Ronan - angry tattoos, angry music, weapons of mass destruction - online shopping is definitely not one of them.  
  
“It looks good.”  
  
Ronan gets up, shoves at Adam’s head as he hunches up his shoulders. His hand slides ever so slightly down the side of Adam’s face just before he disappears into his room and it’s not the first time his skin is left on fire just because Ronan’s touched it but it’s also not happened often enough that Adam’s completely used to it.  
  
He stares at the printed out excel sheet that he uses to jot down his finances every week and tries to think about how much butter costs, if he wants it enough to spend money on it and if he has said money. It suddenly feels weird knowing that Ronan is just at the other end of the door and it’s not that Adam wouldn’t like to talk about his feelings with someone but he’s just not sure who the right person to talk to is. He can imagine ‘so, do you ever think about kissing guys?’ not being the greatest line to use on Blue and Gansey would definitely never ever let it go and Adam’s pretty sure he’s not ready for that.

He reckons he can go a week without butter.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
It’s raining outside and Adam is sitting cross-legged on Noah’s bed. He’s spent the last half hour not doing homework and telling himself he’s been showing up at Monmouth virtually everyday because he can use the angry punk that Noah likes to play while working through his sexual awakening and definitely not because he hopes to run into Ronan. Adam’s not feeling great.

“You know, Noah, for a ghost room, it really is pretty cosy in here.”

Noah smiles widely at him from his spot on the floor, back against the end of the bed he’ll never sleep in. He’s been looking very alive lately and it’s breaking Adam’s heart. “Thanks, Adam.”  
  
Thing is, he knows Ronan is definitely interested in kissing him. Adam knows that he only needs to say the word to get something - anything - started, that he’s the one holding things back. It just feels so completely unnatural to just _get_ something without having to spend endless hours of hard work on it that it gives Adam goosebumps sometimes.  
  
For the hundredth time that summer Adam thinks about how really very decent Ronan is handling this situation, how much he respects him for being so honest and unashamed about his feelings without forgetting that the object of his affection has yet to return them, how odd it is that someone with edges as sharp as a knife can be so subtle, so subdued in his tokens of love.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Adam can see Noah nodding along, maybe to the music that’s playing but probably to Adam’s thoughts and a sudden bravery overcomes him.  
  
“Do you ever think about kissing boys?”  
  
“All the time.”  
  
Adam takes a moment to take in that he’s really talking about this with someone and that his secret no longer just his. He wonders if it ever really was, if he ever really wanted it to be. “Yeah, me too.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, what are your thoughts?” Adam cracks his knuckles just to have something to do.  
  
“On what?”  
  
“On boys. And kissing.”  
  
Noah looks very earnest as he rubs at the smudge on his cheek, not at all as if he’s about to laugh at him. “I think boys are great. I think kissing is super great. What are your thoughts?”  
  
“I mean… you know… Ronan.”  
  
“Right.” Noah reach out to pet at Adam’s hair, runs his finger over the shell of his deaf ear. “Now that I can hear them sometimes, I’m starting to think that thoughts are really quite overrated and that you maybe should stop thinking so much. All of you.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Three days later and Adam has actually been thinking a lot and now, lazing on the hood of Ronan’s car, Ronan’s bare shoulder pressing into his as the sun disappears from the sky he’s come to a few conclusions; he’s scared but not terrified, millions of guys all over the world and probably in Henrietta would kill to trade places with Adam and he’s very aware of that and he _wants_ this. He wants it really, really bad. It’s heat pooling in the pit of his stomach, pins and needles near his elbow, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He’s just not entirely sure how to go about it.

  
“I’m tired.” Adam says as he slowly but deliberately inches his hand towards Ronan’s. “Aren’t you tired?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Well, _I’m_ tired.” He repeats.  
  
Ronan has his eyes closed and he can feel him shiver as their fingers lock but Adam stares determinedly ahead. He feels a little euphoric that he can make Ronan react that way and they’re just breathing, sometimes squeezing each other’s hands but somehow it’s the most intimate thing to Adam. The car is still warm from the sun underneath him.  
  
Adam feels like talking. He feels like listening. He feels like _kissing_. He swipes his thumb over Ronan’s knuckles and turns around so he’s lying on his side. Ronan’s very, very still, eyes closed, mouth tight, a bundle of nervous energy. Adam thinks about how often he understands exactly what is going through Ronan’s mind and how often he doesn’t.  
  
How he knows it now.  
  
“Hey.” Adam says as he leans forward to press his lips to Ronan’s. “Hey.” Another kiss. “Hey, hey, hey.”  
  
Ronan circles his hand around Adam’s wrist and his heart is racing but his mind is very quiet. Something is starting to make sense. He lifts his head just a little and turns back around. Adam’s side hurts a little from the weird angle.  
  
Ronan coughs and his voice is uneven when he says, “So, that wasn’t bad.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Ronan looks at him and their noses are almost touching but not quite. They’re still holding hands. Adam spots just one low-hanging star in the sky just near the side of Ronan’s face but he doesn’t look at it for too long.  
  
“You weren’t that bad either. It almost seems like you’ve had practice.” Adam says because he knows Ronan hasn’t.  
  
“Seems like that.”  
  
“Do you have a secret boyfriend we don’t know about?”  
  
“Sure.” Ronan lets go of Adam’s hand and squeezes his hip in a way that makes him feel warm from Adam’s toes all the way up to his neck. “Several.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
In about twenty minutes, Gansey will come home and they’ll pretend like nothing ever happened. And in their own time they’ll try to find out if something did. Adam’s fine with it.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm working on the long sentences. title is from the song ever said goodbye by the weepies.


End file.
